


One Bad Day

by takethembystorm



Series: Treat Me Like a Princess [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Identity Reveal, Treat Me Like a Princess!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad luck can strike even Paris's Lady Luck, but it's less that and more the consequences that worry Marinette today.  Consequences that are leading to a lot of awkwardness for all involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Major Awkwardness

**Author's Note:**

> A story of [clairelutra](http://clairelutra.tumblr.com) and [caprette](http://caprette.tumblr.com/)'s Treat Me like a Princess universe. Inspiration taken from [here](http://clairelutra.tumblr.com/post/140173359985/imagine-everyone-elses-faces-though-theyre-all), [here](http://clairelutra.tumblr.com/post/140171798745/it-was-super-windyrainy-and-maris-hair-got), and the original oneshot that started this whole mess [here](http://clairelutra.tumblr.com/post/135436286530/with-mighty-apologies-to-miraculer-caprette). Many thanks to clairelutra for letting me play in her universe.
> 
> Originally posted to clairelutra's blog.

Today had not been a good day so far for Marinette Dupain-Cheng. First, the bastard cat—bless his heart, he was sweet, but his insistence on coming to visit her whenever possible was starting to try her patience—had distracted her until one in the morning, at which point she’d remembered about the physics homework they had due this day. He’d offered to help her, but come on, how good of a student could Chat Noir be? She’d been up until three struggling through four damn problems while Chat catnapped in a secluded corner, and then getting him out had taken another ten minutes.

She’d gotten a little sleep after that, up until her dad had dropped a tray of croissants—an oven-hot tray of croissants—onto his foot. The resulting clatter had woken her up thoroughly, at freaking five-thirty. After that she’d just laid awake in bed, staring at her wall, until her mom called her down for breakfast.

And now she was trudging along towards school, except that even the freaking _weather_ had decided to screw with her today. She has to struggle forwards with every step, squinting into a hurricane-force gale. She reflects briefly with a spark of optimism that at least it isn’t raining in spite of the clouds above, at which point—of _freaking_ course—it starts pouring, the school doors mocking her as the crossing light glares a steady red. It’s a relief when she finally crosses the block and gets inside.

Well, up until Chloe happens.

“Look at her,” the banshee shrieks with malicious glee. “I really like your makeover, Marinette, it suits you.”

Marinette glances down. Her jacket is soaked and dripping, her shirt translucent with the damp—at least she hadn’t forgotten a bra today, small mercy—and there’s an uncomfortable squelching in her pants as she shifts. Still, she doesn’t look _too_ bad.

Something jabs her in the back of her neck as she looks back up.  She reaches back with a grimace.

It’s a twig.

Marinette reaches back again and plucks out another twig, then a leaf, then yet another leaf.  She swears and slumps into her chair with a squelch, closing her eyes against the impending tears of frustrated rage.  She’d heard that Adrien liked long hair a while back and now _this_ bullshit had to happen?

There are footsteps and the quiet thump of a bottom meeting a seat.  Alya drags her chair around and plucks the ties from her hair.  There are a few twinges of pain as a few twigs refuse to let go—thank god for straight hair, Marinette reflects—but soon enough they’re all free.

“Brush,” Alya murmurs.  Her voice is lower and scratchier than usual.  Must’ve caught that bug going around.

Marinette raises a hand and points wordlessly at her backpack.  There’s a _ziiiiip_ as Alya opens up the pocket, rummages around for a moment, and pulls her small, straight-handled brush out.  She starts working the brush through the remaining tangles with brisk motions, murmuring soft apologies whenever Marinette winces.

Marinette relaxes a little as Alya finishes and starts idly braiding her hair, then winding the braid into a tight bun.  There’s further rummaging in her backpack for a couple of bobby pins.

“Thanks,” Marinette mumbles, as Alya fixes the bun in place.

She opens her eyes.  Everyone is staring at her.  Alix is staring, mouth gaping.  Ivan to her right is staring.  Nino to her left isn’t staring, but he’s filming her with his phone and suppressing giggles poorly.  Mylene looks as though she’s trying to suppress an excited squeal with somewhat more success than Nino is, even if she is turning bright red.  Alya, right in front of her—Alya?

She turns to look over her shoulder with the same kind of caution that hikers do when they hear a hungry growl from about ten centimeters behind them.

Adrien is sitting behind her, her brush clutched before him like a shield.  He’s flushing.

“Um,” he says.

“Um,” she squeaks.

“Sorry about that,” he says, grinning sheepishly.  She just rabbit-in-headlights stares at him, and his smile falters into the terror of uncertainty.

Chloe breaks the awkwardness by bursting into tears and running out.


	2. Major Embarrassment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Embarrassment naturally follows awkwardness; and how easy it is for matters to follow from there.

After Chloe runs out, Adrien and Sabrina going after her a few seconds later, the entire class breaks out into excited whispers—Alix skips whispering and goes straight to yelling at Kim, demanding that he pay up—with the exception of Nino and Alya.  Nino stops recording and looks up at Alya.  Alya looks back at him.  After a few seconds she remembers to close her mouth.

Nino’s grin grows fractionally wider as he looks back at Marinette.  Alya’s expression just gets more dumbfounded.

“Um,” Marinette says to them.

“Dude,” Nino whispers, eyes sparkling.

Alya says nothing.  Dumbfounded astonishment is starting to give way to an excited squeal as it builds up in her throat.

“What is this circus?”

Ms. Mendeleiev’s voice cracks into the low hubbub like a rifle shot, and the class quiets instantly.

“Well?” she demands, as everyone faces towards her.  “Is anyone going to explain?”

“Yeah,” Alix says, “what the hell was that, Marinette?”

“Language, Alix,” Ms. Mendeleiev says.  “What is she talking about, Marinette?”

“Um,” Marinette says.

Ms. Mendeleiev stares archly at her a minute more before she sighs.  “Very well.  Stay after class.”  She notes the absences for the first time since she’s entered.

“Does anyone know where Adrien, Chloe, and Sabrina are?” she asks.

“Chloe ran out crying and Adrien and Sabrina went after her,” Ivan supplies.

“Tardies, then,” Ms. Mendeleiev murmurs to herself.  “Textbooks out, everyone.  Page 313.”

One class spent itching under the collective gaze of her classmates and the occasional curious glance from Alya later and all she wants to do is run home and lock herself in her room until the sun burns out.  The occasional snigger from Nino, interspersed with excited giggling from Mylene and Rose, helps exactly negative.  The ten-minute lecture she gets from Ms. Mendeleiev helps even less.

The weekend gives the school’s collective imagination plenty of time to ferment hearsay into rumor.  By lunchtime on Monday, the news has apparently spread to half the school.  As she walks through the halls, people are shooting curious glances at her with whispers of “isn’t that the one the Agreste kid is dating?” and more poisonous rumors besides.  Chloe’s work, probably.

“We’re not dating,” she tells Alya as she sits next to her in class.

“I know _we’re_ not,” Alya says, arching an eyebrow.  “But I take it you’re talking about you and Adrien.”

“Oh thank god you don’t believe the rumors,” Marinette breathes.

“I dunno,” Alya says.  “The two of you were looking pretty domestic there.  And I mean, like, old married couple domestic.”

“Nah,” Nino says, vaulting over his desk and plopping into his seat in one smooth motion.  “I vote newlywed domestic.  Old married couple domestic, they’d be fighting more.”

Alya “hmms” thoughtfully.  “That’s actually a pretty good point,” she says.

Her eyes sparkle with a sudden cheery malice.  “Marinette?” she asks slowly.  “Did you two elope?”

“What?”

“No, no,” Nino says, shaking his head in mock reproof, “obviously they decided on the simpler option and just professed their undying love for one another atop the Eiffel Tower."

“Are you kidding?” Alya says, gesturing at an increasingly flustered Marinette.  “My girl wouldn’t settle for anything less than a ring, a dress, and a fully catered reception.”

“That’s kinda the opposite of eloping, Alya,” Nino points out.

Alya stops and considers this for a moment.  “Good point,” she concedes.  “Maybe they just banged each other then.”

“We did not have sex,” Marinette hisses.  Behind them, Alix snickers.  “We did not do anything, we _aren’t_ anything, oh, shut up, Alya.”

“Aw,” Alya coos, patting Marinette on the head.  “Isn’t she cute when she’s in denial?”

Marinette swats Alya’s hand away.

“Okay, but real talk,” Nino says.  “What was up with you two?  I mean, okay, fine, you aren’t secretly dating or anything, but he was making bedroom eyes at you.  I have video evidence if you want to argue the point.”

“Oo, can you send it to me later?” Alya says.

“Sure, babe,” Nino says.

They both turn to her, silently waiting for her reply.

“I don’t know,” Marinette says.  “I don’t know what was going on, I don’t know what happened, and I’m just really, really confused.”  She can feel frustrated tears burning in her eyes.  “I just want someone to take me aside and explain whatever the hell’s going on to me.”

“You’re being a poaching bitch is what’s happening,” Chloe says without looking at her, in one of those special half-whispers designed to be heard from across a crowded room.

Alya goes from teasing to furious in the span of a heartbeat as she rounds on Chloe, drawing in breath for an outraged shout.

Adrien beats her to the punch as he freezes halfway through the classroom door.

“Chloe!” he roars—and it’s an actual roar, a deep-chested bellow with the undertones of an angry panther.  The entire class freezes in instinctive terror.  Kim dives under his desk, covering the back of his head and neck with his hands.

“Outside,” Adrien growls.  “Now.”

Marinette fights the urge to cower.  Nino does too, but loses.

Adrien holds the door open for Chloe as she stands up and walks out, then slams it shut, hard enough that the windows rattle.  A second later, the shouting starts.

A few words, mostly in Chloe’s shrill tones, get through as they argue outside, “what the actual hell”, “tart”, “gold-digging harlot”, and “too good for” among them.  After a minute, Adrien opens the door again and Chloe walks in again, much subdued.  The look of silent fury on Adrien’s normally congenial features is enough to quell any questioning.

After school, Chloe intercepts Marinette before she’s gotten halfway off of the campus.  “We need to talk,” Chloe says.  “Alone.”

Alya gives Marinette a worried, sidelong look before directing a withering glare at Chloe.

“It’s fine,” Marinette murmurs.  “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

Alya waits with Sabrina as Marinette and Chloe wander a few meters off.

“All right,” Marinette says.  “What?”

“Adrien’s been my friend since we were six,” Chloe says.

“Good for you?” Marinette replies.

Chloe’s expression sharpens, and for a moment violence, verbal or otherwise, is imminent.  The moment passes as the blonde takes a deep breath and schools her features into something resembling neutrality again.

“My point is,” Chloe says, voice tight, “is that I get it.  I lost.  Adrien obviously had an attack of insanity and decided that you were a better fit for him.  I can accept that.”  The blonde leans in closer, her voice dropping to a hiss.  “But he’s still one of my best friends.  Break his heart, Cheng, and I will ruin you.”

Marinette can’t help but laugh.  “What the hell are you talking about?” she manages to get out.  “Adrien and I aren’t—we aren’t anything.  We haven’t _been_ anything.”

Chloe scoffs at that.  “Oh, please.  You two have obviously been”—she spits the word acidly—“intimate on some level for a long time.”  At Marinette’s bemused expression she gestures to her pigtails.  “The hair?  My god, don’t you even know that?  Even loose women don’t let a guy that close to their hair unless they’re close.  Allowances for gay best friends, of course.”

A hundred little insignificant details snap together into clarity.  The obvious corner and edge bits of the puzzle come together first: the hair, the eye color, the build, the gentle curve of their smiles, the cheekbones— _god,_ their jawlines.  Then the rest of it snaps into place.

The _hair_.  She’d taken a look at herself in the mirror during lunch that day and she’d thought the bun—high on her neck, right of center such that the edge of the bun lay right on the centerline, braid immaculate and even—looked familiar.  It’d looked familiar because it’d been _Chat’s_.  He always said that the asymmetry looked good on her.

More memories slam into the forefront of her thoughts.  She’d neglected getting a haircut for a few months, and Chat had made an offhand comment about how it was nice, her having enough hair for a decent ponytail.  The very next morning Adrien had made the same comment, with the exact same wording.  The night she’d demanded a sonnet about her beauty from Chat, he’d begged for a day’s time to write it; she’d graciously allowed it.  The next day she’d nearly run headlong into a sleep-deprived Adrien mumbling over what would turn out to be the concluding couplet of the poem Chat would give her later that evening.

On and on and on, coincidence after coincidence.  At the time she’d thought they were strange, but her desperate plans to get Chat Noir out of the life of Marinette Dupain-Cheng had taken priority, and she’d forgotten all about it soon enough.

They fit too well.  Everything fits too damn well.

_Adrien is Chat Noir._

Some of the shock bleeds through and Chloe notices.  “Are you really that clueless,” she mutters.  “Well, maybe everything will return to sanity sooner than we expect.”

Marinette doesn’t respond as Chloe turns on a heel and marches away.

Well.

Adrien.  Dreamboat, sweetest thing alive, love of her life.  Is also Chat Noir.  Doofy, dorky, nerdy as hell, loyal partner in crime-fighting.  Who has been visiting her regularly in the evenings, calling her cute pet names, doing her every bidding without a word of complaint, who has been kind and patient and _dishonest_ with her.

Well.

The hours between the end of school and Chat’s—Adrien’s—usual evening visit gives her plenty of time to reflect on the situation.  It’s probably a bad idea, since every time she runs over the facts it just ratchets the sense of betrayal up another notch, but by the time that thought gets her attention she’s too keyed up to care.

He’d _known_.  He’d _known_ all this time that she was crushing on him and he’d decided to toy with her feelings by bringing Chat Noir into the equation.

But that didn’t make any sense.  Adrien wasn’t like that.

Adrien wasn’t like that as far as she _knew_.  And apparently she’d been too stupid to realize that he’d been Chat _freaking_ Noir this entire time, so maybe he was like that and was just really good at hiding it.

But she knew Chat Noir, too.

And she knew that Chat Noir was a freaking _playboy_ , and she was apparently just another notch on his bedpost.

Except that Chat _wasn’t_ a playboy—

Yes he was!  He flirted constantly—

Only with Ladybug and Marinette, and Marinette only recently—

Exactly!

On and on and on, the argument in her head only serving to help build up her temper into a furious storm.

She stops pacing on her terrace long enough to look up, and sees his familiar silhouette arcing across the Parisian night.  He lands in a silent crouch next to her maybe fifteen seconds later.

“Princess,” he says without preamble.  His tone is soft and level.  On some level, he must know that he’s in trouble.  “Can we talk?”

“We need to,” she replies.

“About what, Princess?” he says after a moment’s hesitation.  He tries for light and unconcerned, but only gets so far as worried-but-trying-to-appear-like-he-isn’t.

“First off,” she says, “we need to talk about why you never told me that you knew me.  And if you try that bullshit about ‘you never asked’ you’re dead to me.”

Chat—Adrien—droops.  “Oh,” he says.  “You found out?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Chloe.”

His eyes widen in sudden panic.  “Chloe figured it out?”

“No, I put it together.  Stop evading.  Why?”

He squirms under her steady gaze.

“I’ve had a thing for you for a while now,” he finally says.  “And I figured that if Chat Noir couldn’t win you over, then dumb old Adrien wouldn’t have a chance.”

His response makes another little crack in the levees holding back her fury.  “Win me over?” she says carefully.  “Excuse me?  Do I look like some sort of prize to be won?”

He winces.  “Perhaps I put that poorly”—

“Do you love Ladybug?” she asks abruptly.

“Yes,” he says, stunned into honesty by the sudden change in the conversation.

“And you love me.”

“Yes,” he says after a breath, more quietly.

“So what am I to you?” she asks.  “Just your rebound crush?  Just some stupid little girl you were using to get over Ladybug?”  She’d intended to snap at him, but it comes out soft and sad instead.

“What?” Chat—Adrien—says.  “No, never that.”

“Then what?”  This does come out as hard and harsh as she intends, and he flinches a little.  “You just told me that you love us both.  What am I supposed to think, that you won’t just waltz off with her if she shows up here and now and announces that she loves you?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I chose you,” Adrien says in the cadence of one declaring a simple fact: the sky is blue, water is wet, Chat would die for Ladybug.  “Because a while ago I made the decision that if I was ever so fortunate as to have us become an ‘us’, that I would do everything in my power to keep it that way.  Because I don’t want an ‘us’ founded simply on feelings.”

He shrugs lightly.  “After all, I had feelings for Ladybug, and those changed.  Didn’t fade, precisely, but changed.  And I don’t want what we have to fall apart because of that.”

It’s a good reason.  It’s in fact probably the best he could’ve given.  But the levee is broken now, and she’s not in a mood for forgiveness.  She takes a deep and deliberate breath before she speaks.

“Well, you don’t need to worry about that,” she says, voice flat and calm, “because what we have is falling apart because of your dishonesty.  Now go away.  Don’t bother coming back.”

She can hear his heart break from where she stands, and she relents a little.

“I’ll get in touch with you when I’m ready.  Until then, don’t come back.  Don’t try to mend any bridges.  Don’t try to get Nino or Alya to pressure me into forgiving you.  Try any of that and we’re done for good.  Do you understand?”

He nods, then turns and leaps away without a further word.

It’s about then that she lets herself break down.


	3. Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stumble, trip, and fall as you might: eventually you'll get your balance back.

Some part of her realizes that she’s made a mistake almost as soon as he leaves.  Some part of her, screaming with irrational rage, doesn’t care.

The rest of her misses him.

About this time, she reflects the night after, he’d be in here with her already.  He’d be filing her nails, or painting them a fetching shade of Ladybug red, or be bringing in takeout or brushing her hair out, or feeding her macarons, or he’d be playing out a skein of yarn for her as she knitted or massaging her feet and calves if it’d been a long day, or idly braiding her hair if she couldn’t think of something for him to do.

She stares at her reflection in her mirror for a little while.  Then she sighs, and begins pulling her brush through her hair in brusque, swift motions.  She doesn’t bother with gentleness, but drags the brush through the tangles as though it’s a sword and they’ve personally wronged her.  A few quick swipes finishes that job—Adrien always took way too long—and she pulls it into a side braid.

She isn’t going to cry.  She _isn’t_ going to cry.  She cried yesterday, and that was it.  She’s done with crying.  She’d seen the dark bags under Adrien’s bloodshot eyes today, messily covered up with concealer, and she hadn’t cried then.  She could handle it now.

It’s a close thing.

The next day is a Wednesday, which is good, because it gives her an excuse to not see anyone.  She half expects Adrien to show up at her front door—or more probably, her window or terrace—with apology flowers, before she remembers that she’d told him to piss off and not come back until she wanted him.  Which is fine.

Alya tries calling her, then texting.  She tells her that she’s feeling a little under the weather.

Thursday’s clouds give way to Friday’s rain before she cracks.

That evening, after a drizzly patrol, she stays out a little longer, giving Adrien a little time to get home.  Then she moves, swiftly and surely, through the night, landing in a crouch on the Agreste mansion roof.  It takes a little while to find his room.

When she does, she secures the yoyo on something solid, gives it a few test pulls, then realizes that she’s stalling and takes a breath.  Before she can reconsider, she drops down until she’s dangling upside down in front of his window.

His room is big.  As in, it’s like, two-thirds the size of her _house_.  Two freaking levels, a library, a widescreen TV that wouldn’t fit on her wall, arcade games, a rock-climbing wall—huh, no wonder he’d been the more nimble of the two of them when they first started—a bed the size of Belgium, in which he’s currently buried under a heap of blankets, a freaking Alienware computer, the list goes on and on and on.

She raps on the window twice.

Adrien must not have been asleep, because he instantly jerks so violently at the noise that he nearly takes himself off of the bed.

“Who’s there?” he asks, eyes wide with panic.  They fasten on her and get wider.

She taps again on the glass.  “May I come in?” she asks.  When he doesn’t respond, she mouths the words exaggeratedly.

He gets it this time, stumbling out of bed—huh, polka-dot pajama bottoms; somehow she isn’t surprised—and rushing over to unlatch the window.

Apparently he didn’t get it after all, because he just stands there stupidly while the crickets chirp in the damp.

“May I come in?” she repeats.

Adrien jerks in surprise again and takes a step or two back.  “Yeah, yeah, absolutely,” he says, “I’m so sorry, do you want me to get you a towel or anything?”

“It’s fine,” she says, dropping to the floor and retracting her yoyo.  She turns and closes and latches the window, then draws the curtains so that only a bare sliver of light from outside gets into the room, shining in a razor line across the floor.  She turns back to Adrien.

They stand there like that, her dripping softly onto his floor, him keeping his gaze directed at his shuffling feet.

“I guess Marinette told you, then,” he says, eventually.  “About, y’know, what I did.”  He takes a shaky breath.  “How I exploited her.  How I betrayed her trust.”

He swallows and croaks, “How I hurt her.”

She doesn’t deserve to be Ladybug.

He takes a deep breath and stands a little straighter.  His eyes meet hers, steady, if a bit watery, and calm.

“Well, whatever you’re going to do to me,” he says quietly, “do it and get it over with.  I deserve it.”

It empties out of her like a bursting dam.  Her transformation collapses in a wave of sparkling pink motes and she grabs onto him with a sob.  She can feel him go rigid with shock.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs into him, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”—

“Marinette?”

—“I’m so sorry, I’ve been such a hypocrite about this, I love you and I’m so sorry”—

“Marinette?”

—“I should never have pushed you away, I never should have tried to hurt you like that, I’m sorry”—

He holds her close and lets her sob herself dry.  When she finishes, she moves her hands up to his chest and pushes gently.  He lets her go, and she takes a step back.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, looking down at her feet.  They’re small next to Adrien’s.

“Would you be opposed if I kissed you?” he says.

She almost lurches back and onto her butt out of pure reactionary shock.  Adrien’s eyes widen.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” he says.  “Was that too forward?  I mean, are you still mad at me?  That was the wrong thing to say, wasn’t it.  Oh god, I am so sorry.”

She chuckles.  “Wasn’t this how we became friends in the first place?” she says.  “Y’know, you, me, raining, your umbrella, you apologizing, me being a bit of a jerk?”  She smiles at him.  “I still have it, you know."

“You, you can keep it,” he says quickly.  “If you want.  I, lots.  I have, lots.”

Her smile fades a little.  “I don’t think us kissing right now would be such a hot idea,” she says.  “Ask me again tomorrow, maybe?  After patrol?”

Adrien nods quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Don’t be,” he says.

“No,” she says.  “You were patient and kind to me all the way, even when I didn’t deserve it.  When I really didn’t deserve it.  I overreacted.  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Princess,” he says, taking her hands in his.

They stand like that for a while, looking at their hands.

“So, um,” he says.

“Um,” she says.  “I’d better get going.”

She bites her lip and looks up at him.  “Why’d you brush my hair that day?”

“Force of habit,” he says, looking at her.  “I was tired and not thinking particularly straight, and well, you needed it.”

“You were _sleeping_ while I suffered,” she says.

He lets out an offended scoff.  “I was waiting for you to turn to me for help!  I wasn’t about to intrude where I wasn’t wanted.”

“And yet Chat Noir somehow kept showing up at my place,” she says.  “Y’know, before I realized that you were also the love of my life.”

His eyebrows shoot up.  “Wait, you didn’t want me there?”

“At first, yeah.  Secret identity and all that.  I’m glad that you put up with me being dumb.”

“To be honest, I thought that was just what friends did.”

A pause as she considers this.  “Oh.  Chloe.”

He does an odd nod-shrug.  “She cares in her own prickly way.”

“I know.  She threatened to ruin me if I broke your heart.”  Marinette looks down at their joined hands again.  “S-Sorry about that, by the way.”

“I know.  I had another set of words with her about that.”

More silence.

“Well, goodnight,” she says.  “Tikki, spots on.”

Adrien shields his eyes as light pours over Marinette, blinking owlishly at her as it fades and winks out, leaving Ladybug in her place.  On mad impulse, she leans forwards and kisses him on the cheek before unlatching the window and leaping out.

The spot still burns with phantom warmth when they meet up the next night and she drowns it in fire.


End file.
